Jets hope Santonio Holmes ready for start of season

It sounds like Jets wide receiver Santonio Holmes will miss at least some of the team’s offseason program and training camp as he recovers from the foot injury that cut short his 2012 season.

Holmes, who agreed to take a pay cut for the coming season last week, had surgery on the foot and coach Rex Ryan said Tuesday that the team will keep him on a limited program during the offseason. It’s “certainly a possibility” that he remains limited in camp and the team hope that an abundance of caution will make it possible for Holmes to be on the field come the first week of the season.

“The main thing is, I just hope he’s ready for opening day,” Ryan said, via Rich Cimini of ESPNNewYork.com. “That’s going to be the goal. … I’ll lean on [trainer] John Mellody and have all the confidence in the world that he’ll get him right.”

Holmes has created his share of headaches for the Jets in the last couple of years, but it’s not hard to understand why having him healthy for the start of the year is a priority. It just takes one look at the rest of the Jets’ depth chart at receiver to see why they’d want to give whoever is playing quarterback a chance with the team’s most talented receiver.